The Old Icelandic Calendar

Today's date in the Old Icelandic Calendar:

The Old Icelandic, or Norse, calendar was based around the solstices and equinoxes as these were, and are, very important in these northern regions of the world. Iceland has very short days in the winter and the coming of the Winter Solstice marks the rebirth of the year and the promise of the long days and light nights of the summer. Because of this, the year begins around the Winter Solstice.

The year consists of 12 months of 30 days, with an extra four days in the middle of summer, called Sumarauki. This produces a year of 364 days, i.e. exactly 52 weeks. To account for leap years an extra seven days, i.e. a full week, are added to Sumarauki after five or six Gregorian years. This ensures that each date in the calendar falls on the same day of the week each year. For example, leap years in the first two decades of the 21st century occur in 2001, 2007, 2012 and 2017.

The arrangement of the months are shown below, with the day of the week that each month starts in brackets, and the starting dates in the gregorian calendar from December 2010 until December 2017.